Research on mice links fast food to Alzheimer's

They test mice because their workings inside are so much like humans...

LONDON (Reuters) - Mice fed junk food for nine months showed signs of developing the abnormal brain tangles strongly associated with Alzheimer's disease, a Swedish researcher said on Friday.

The findings come from a series of published papers by a researcher at Sweden's Karolinska Institutet...

"On examining the brains of these mice, we found a chemical change not unlike that found in the Alzheimer brain," Susanne Akterin, a researcher at the Karolinska Institutet's Alzheimer's Disease Research Center, who led the study, said in a statement...

Alzheimer's disease is incurable and is the most common form of dementia among older people. It affects the regions of the brain involving thought, memory and language. More here.

Science journalist Gary Taubes hypothesizes that the excessive amounts of sugar and refined flour in American diets are contributing to Alzheimer's. He reports increases in the incidence of Alzheimer's in Japanese immigrants to the U.S. and in African Americans compared to rural Africans. Type 2 diabetics have about twice as much risk of contracting Alzheimer's disease as non-diabetics. And diabetics on insulin therapy have a fourfold increase in risk. (Taubes, 2007, Good Calories Bad Calories, pp 205-209)